Mao: A Very Short Introduction

Delia Davin

Description

A giant of 20th century history, Mao Zedong played many roles: peasant revolutionary, patriotic leader against the Japanese occupation, Marxist theoretician, modernizer, and visionary despot. This Very Short Introduction chronicles Mao's journey from peasant child to ruler of the most populous nation on Earth. Delia Davin provides an invaluable portrait of Mao, showing him in all his complexity--ruthless, brutal, and ambitious, a man of enormous talent and perception, yet a leader who is still detested by some and venerated by others. She shows how he helped found both the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army, and how for many years he fought on two fronts, for control of the Party and in an armed struggle for the Party's control of the country. His revolution unified China and began its rise to world power status. He was the architect of the Great Leap Forward that he hoped would make China both prosperous and egalitarian, but instead ended in economic disaster resulting in millions of deaths. It was Mao's growing suspicion of his fellow leaders that led him to launch the Cultural Revolution, and his last years were dogged by ill-health and his despairing attempts to find a successor. Davis also looks at the years of his death, when the reform leadership abandoned Mao's revolutionary goals and embraced the market.

About the Series:

Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

Mao: A Very Short Introduction

Delia Davin

Table of Contents

1. Formative years2. Marxist Labour organizer to Peasant Revolutionary3. Achieving pre-eminence 1934-19494. The revolution institutionalized: first years of the People's Republic5. The Great Leap Forward and its Aftershocks6. The Cultural Revolution7. Decline and death8. Assessments and legaciesReferences and further reading

Mao: A Very Short Introduction

Delia Davin

Author Information

Delia Davin is Emeritus Professor of Chinese Studies at Leeds University. She is the author of several books on revolutionary and contemporary China. Her abiding interest in Mao Zedong and the history of Maoist China was inspired by her experience of living in Beijing.

Questions for Thought and Discussion

Mao’s writings show a considerable concern with the position of women and with the liberation of women. Is it surprising that his personal life shows little consistency with this concern?

Why were the lives of Mao’s wives and children so hard?

Why was Mao so angry about Khrushchev’s attack on Stalin at the 20th congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union?

Mao emphasized the importance of the role of peasants in the Chinese revolution. Why then did workers benefit so much more that peasants from the changes that took place after the establishment of the People’s Republic?

Why did Mao launch the Great Leap Forward and why was he so reluctant to abandon it?

Why was Mao so determined that China should have its own nuclear weapons?

Why did Mao launch the Cultural Revolution? Is it best understood as a leadership power struggle or a mass movement?

Why was it so difficult for the authorities to explain Lin Biao’s death? Was the Lin Biao incident a turning point in Chinese history?

Why, after so many years of attacking US imperialism, did Mao welcome Nixon’s visit to China and the improvement of relations with the United States that it symbolized?

Was Mao in any sense a Chinese nationalist?

Why did Mao have such difficulty in selecting a successor?

Why was Mao able to hold the balance of power between the contending factions of his would be successors, even when he was unable to walk or speak coherently? Why did others attempt to take power only when he had died?

Why did Deng Xiaoping refuse to negate Mao’s legacy, even though he himself had suffered so much at Mao’s hands?

Why is Mao still officially venerated in the People’s Republic and why at the popular level is he still often considered a great leader?

Further Reading

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (Foreign Languages Press, 1967) A ‘condensed Mao’ carried by almost every Chinese during the Cultural Revolution and known in English as the Little Red Book. Available online at Marxists.org

Philip Short Mao, A Life (Henry Holt, 1999) Lengthy, thoroughly researched and readable.

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday Mao, the Unknown Story (Random House, 2005) Best-selling, unremittingly hostile biography that was well received in the general press but heavily criticised by academic reviewers.

Gregor Benton and Lin Chun (Eds.) Was Mao really a Monster? The academic response to Chang and Halliday’s Mao: the Unknown story (Routledge, 2010) A collection of critical reviews of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s bestseller.

Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals Mao’s Last Revolution. A detailed study of Mao’s last two decades.